by Sandra Field
I don’t want children… Clenching her fists, she pushed the words away and said sharply, “You’re not in love with me?”
“Of course not. Nor was I eight years ago. But whatever happened between us meant something to me.”
“Why are you so opposed to marriage and having a family? They’re normal enough needs.”
His face closed against her. “It’s a long story, and not one I’m about to tell.”
Her brain made another lightning-swift leap. “I sent one of my letters to your parents’ house—if I can believe you when you say you didn’t get them, then it’s possible they’re the ones who intercepted the letters. Do they hate you? Is that what the problem is?”
“Lay off,” he said in an ugly voice.
“Don’t tell me what to do! Was it your parents who scared you off commitment? How, Seth?”
He said with vicious emphasis, “Thick-skinned doesn’t begin to describe you—you’ve got a hide like a rhinoceros.”
“It’d take a rhinoceros to make any impression on you.” Or a rebel bullet, she thought sickly. “I hate this conversation,” she muttered. “Surely we don’t have to stand here trading insults like a couple of kids.”
He said brusquely, “I’ll leave here a day early, and in the meantime I’ll make sure our paths don’t cross.”
“So you can be hostage to your parents for the rest of your life?” she cried, and wondered if, deep down, she wasn’t fighting for Marise as much as for herself.
“You have no right to ask questions like that.”
She had every right. Because Marise, particularly since she’d started school and met other children, all of whom had fathers, had on occasion expressed the wish that her own father appear on the scene. A wish that Lia had been quite unable to fulfill.
Marise’s father was standing right in front of her. Adamant, hostile and immovable. She said, not bothering to mask the bitterness in her voice, “Very well. I’ll eat in the Tradewind Room and I’ll do my best to stay out of your way. Goodbye, Seth. Have a comfortable life.”
He made no move to stop her as she turned on her heel and left the clearing behind his cottage. His face had been like a mask, she thought. Hard and empty, blank-eyed.
She’d totally lost her appetite. Lia hurried back to her cottage and went inside. It looked exactly as it had when she’d left. It was herself who’d changed.
The only man she’d slept with in eight years wouldn’t so much as kiss her. Wouldn’t marry her, or have an affair with her. Certainly would never act as a father to their child.
And how that hurt.
When Marise had first asked about her father, Lia had said carefully, “We only met once, Marise. He wasn’t able to marry me, and we’ve never been in touch.”
“Was he nice?” four-year-old Marise had asked, big-eyed.
“Very nice.”
“Can we go for ice cream now?”
So the two of them had walked down the lane from the old farmhouse to the little village, where they’d eaten banana splits in the shadows of the tall elms…
So long ago, Lia thought with a sigh. She’d have to keep this meeting with Seth a secret. How could she possibly tell Marise that the man who’d fathered her didn’t want to have children?
Tension was knotting her shoulders again, just as if she hadn’t spent a wad of money yesterday at the spa. She could do with a massage right now, Lia thought, opening her laptop to check her e-mails. There was one from Nancy, with a digital photo of Marise grinning at the camera in her long white nightgown, her brown hair tumbling down her back. In a surge of love and protectiveness Lia gazed at the image, into eyes the green of summer meadows. The farm that was their home was called, appropriately, Meadowland.
Should she tell Seth he was a father? When she’d mailed the two letters, that had been her decision: he had the right to know. Maybe, just maybe, he hadn’t gotten those letters. But did that change anything? Marise wasn’t an unborn baby anymore; she was seven years old, trusting and vulnerable.
In all this mess, one thing was clear. Marise mustn’t get hurt.
Added to that, Seth didn’t want any further involvement with Lia herself: he’d made that clear a few minutes ago. Not that he’d ever really been involved with her. So why did she feel like bawling her head off? Just like Marise when she fell down, or when one of her friends was mean to her.
Damned if she was going to cry her eyes out over a man who was all over her one day and then the next wouldn’t even kiss her. Lia peeled and ate a mango, scarcely tasting the juicy yellow flesh, then changed into her swimsuit. However, a very vigorous swim in the sea didn’t help at all. She was tired, she was hungry, and her brain was in a state of total confusion. Moral dilemmas were just that: dilemmas. Difficult to solve, and without any assurance that the choice made was the right one. Should she or shouldn’t she tell Seth about Marise?
Sooner or later, he’d read something about her daughter. Although Lia did her best to keep Marise safe from any publicity, the media had a long reach and an even longer memory. Wouldn’t it be better to tell him herself rather than have him find out by accident?
She didn’t know. She simply didn’t know. Maybe telling him was no big deal: if he didn’t want children, he’d pay no more attention to Marise now than he had since her conception.
Lia gritted her teeth. She’d despise Seth if he neglected her daughter that way.
After showering the salt from her hair and skin, Lia dressed in shorts and a brief top, and took her precious Stradivarius violin from its case. The truths of music had always sustained her in times of trouble; perhaps they’d help her now. She tuned the violin and began to play, standing by the window of her bedroom with its view of jade-green sea and gently swaying palm trees.
She should practice the Brahms she’d be playing in Vienna next week. Instead she let her mind wander, drifting from melody to melody, pouring into the music all her confusion and pain.
How could one man have so much power over her?
CHAPTER EIGHT
SETH had gone to the Reef Room for breakfast, burying his nose in the newspaper and eating the food as if it was so much sawdust. He’d done the right thing by ousting Lia from his life. So why did he feel like a number-one louse?
He rattled the papers irritably, trying to concentrate on the latest uprising in the Philippines. But Lia’s face kept intruding itself between him and the newsprint. She’d fought, but she hadn’t begged. She’d been hurt, but she hadn’t cried.
He wanted her as he’d wanted no other woman in his life.
Was she right? Was he still in thrall to his parents? One thing he knew: when he got home, he was driving straight to the huge stone mansion where he’d grown up and confronting his mother about the letters. His father would never have tampered with Seth’s mail; but Eleonore could have, Seth thought, sickened. She’d have seen Lia as a penniless musician after the Talbot money; but did that mean she’d behaved so underhandedly? So maliciously?
He wanted answers from her, and he was going to get them.
Were the kids he got so involved with through the foundation his surrogate children? Had a woman ever shaken him up as Lia could?
With a low growl of frustration Seth folded the paper and left the restaurant. He was going to bury himself in work today and forget about Lia d’Angeli.
But as he sat down in front of his computer, through the open window drifted, faintly, the notes of a violin. She was playing, he thought. Three cottages away, the wind carrying the music toward him. Slowly he got up, the melody tugging him like a magnet.
He threaded his way through the lush gardens behind the cottages, the sun hot on his shoulders. When he got to Lia’s cottage, he walked around to the front and stood still for a few minutes on the steps, listening intently, feeling all her unhappiness and uncertainty as his own. But as each perfect note took possession of him, the last of Seth’s doubts vanished. Lia had written the letters: her music searched too profoundly for truth for
him to doubt her word.
His mind shied away from the mechanics of their disappearance. Later, he thought. Later.
That she’d written to him must mean she’d longed to reconnect with him. No wonder she’d been so hurt and angry when they’d met again, here on the island.
He had to tell her he believed her.
The front door was unlocked. Seth pushed it open and walked in. Her laptop was on the table, open, the screensaver shifting brightly colored musical notes from top to bottom and side to side. She must be in the bedroom; she’d shifted from Tchaikovsky’s lyricism to a modernistic lament, full of dissonance and a wild, unappeasable grief. Struck to the heart, his feet anchored to the floor, Seth forgot this wasn’t his cottage or his computer; with his mind on automatic pilot, his fingers briefly hit the space bar.
An image flashed onto the screen, distracting him from the music. A little girl wearing a white nightgown was smiling right at him. A very pretty little girl with brown curly hair and green eyes.
Green like his.
Seth sank down into the nearest chair, his gaze riveted to the screen. The little girl’s chin was tilted, just as Lia sometimes tilted hers. Lia’s child, he thought numbly. She looked to be about seven.
His child?
He’d used no protection that night in the hotel in Paris. It could be his child. Was that why Lia had written him two letters, two so that he’d get the news even if one of them by chance went astray?
How often did he see eyes of a true, deep green? It had to be his child.
He, Seth, was the father of a daughter.
His heart was thudding in his chest as though he’d run from one end of the island to the other. His hands were ice-cold. For over seven years he’d been a father, and hadn’t known it. Seven long years…
As he pushed back the chair, it scraped on the floor. The music stopped with startling abruptness. From the bedroom Lia called, “Is someone there?”
His voice was stuck somewhere in his throat. He heard her footsteps pad across the polished wood floor and from a long way away watched her walk into the living room. She was still holding her bow and violin. When she saw him, she stopped dead in her tracks.
Seth, Lia thought. In her cottage. In front of her laptop with its photo of Marise. He was white-faced, his eyes blank with shock. She took a deep breath and said, trying hard to be calm and instead sounding heartless, “She’s your child, Seth.”
He cleared his throat. “I’d already figured that out.”
“That’s why I wrote to you, two months after we met. To tell you I was pregnant. But you say you didn’t get my letters.”
“I didn’t—although I do believe you wrote them. Whoever intercepted them has a lot to answer for,” he said, his voice as clipped as a robot’s. “What’s her name?”
“Marise. She’s seven.”
“Does she know about me?”
“Not really…when she first asked about you, I told her I’d known you only very briefly, and that you couldn’t marry me. She’s never asked your name.”
He said with painful truth, “You were left alone to bear my child. I’ve never seen her, written to her, given you any money for her support—”
“I didn’t write to you because I wanted money!”
“I never said you did.” He asked another crucial question. “Why didn’t you tell me about her yesterday?”
“How could I, when I still don’t know what to believe about the letters? For someone to have intercepted them—intervened in your life and mine so callously—it’s monstrous.”
“Yes,” Seth said quietly, “it was monstrous.”
“Plus you were so intent on informing me you didn’t want children. Never had and, I presumed, never would. What was I supposed to do?”
“Were you planning to tell me at some time in the future?”
“I don’t know.” She put the violin and bow down on the table, running her fingers through the silky darkness of her hair. “That’s why I was playing. To try to figure out what I was going to do.”
Some of his anger escaped in spite of himself. “You should have told me the minute we met!”
“When I was introduced to you in the lobby? Oh hi, Seth, nice to see you again—what’s it been? Eight years? By the way, I left your daughter home this trip. Give me a break.”
“You’ve been acting ever since we met. Lying to me, in effect.” Wasn’t that what really hurt?
“It’s not that simple,” she fumed. “I won’t risk hurting my daughter, Seth. Not if you’re going to pull another vanishing act because children aren’t in your life plan. A child wasn’t in mine eight years ago, believe me. But I had to make the best of it and—”
The words were torn from him. “Didn’t you consider having an abortion?”
“No. Not even for a minute.” She added in distress, for he looked like a man in torment, “Seth, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he rapped, struggling to subdue all the demons of the past. “Abortion would have been a logical step. You were alone, your career was taking off…”
“I did my best to combine the two—motherhood and career.” She smiled wryly. “Several critics wrote how my music deepened and grew richer in my mid-twenties. Little did they know.”
Seth said, through the tightness in his chest, “You’re a good woman, Lia.”
Unexpectedly tears swam in her eyes. “Thank you,” she gulped.
“I have to meet Marise.”
“You’re going too fast for me.”
“Seven years, Lia! That’s what I’ve been cheated out of. And now you say I’m going too fast?”
“Cheated? But you don’t want children.”
“I’ve got one. Whether I want one or not.”
She said with careful precision, “I love Marise more than anyone else in the world. I won’t let you, or anyone else, hurt her. Not if I can help it.”
“What kind of man do you think I am?”
“How can I answer that? I scarcely know you.”
“That’s not true,” he retorted. “We spent most of one night together—you can find out a lot about someone when you share a bed.”
“I’ve changed since then, and so, I’m sure, have you. I won’t gamble Marise’s happiness, Seth.”
His eyes like gimlets, he said, “Who’s with her now?”
“Nancy. My full-time nanny, tutor and good friend. Marise adores her. Nancy insists that for a few days every year I go away somewhere to relax. No child, no concerts, and she’d really prefer I leave my violin at home, too. That’s why I’m here. Not that I’ve had much in the way of relaxation.”
“So does Marise stay home when you’re on tour?”
“Is this an inquisition to see if I’m a fit mother?”
He stepped closer, tracing the angry lift of her chin with one finger. “No. I’m sorry, I’m not thinking straight. I can’t imagine you being anything but the best of mothers.”
She rested her forehead on his shoulder, more touched than she wanted him to know. “It’s hard sometimes. The tours are exhausting. If I’m going to be away for a while, she and Nancy travel with me for part of the time. But otherwise, Marise stays home—I’ve tried my best to give her as normal a life as I can. But I couldn’t give up my music!”
“Of course you couldn’t.” He put his arm around her waist, drawing her closer. “She looks like a very happy little girl,” he said huskily.
Lia glanced up, mischief glinting in her dark eyes. “She inherited my temper.”
He laughed. “Is she musical?”
“Can’t play a note. But she loves books, and she’s already written about ten stories of her own.”
Seth said painfully, “My father’s a great reader. He ran a publishing house until he retired, and he’s been working on a novel for years.”
One more strand tying them together. “Oh, Seth, what will we do?”
“I’m going home and finding out what happened to those letters. You�
��re going home and telling Marise about me. Then she and I will meet.”
“You make it sound much too easy. No marriage, no children, that’s what you said. I don’t want marriage, either, so that’s no problem. But you have a child, a real live flesh-and-blood child. Fatherhood requires commitment—it sounds to me like you’re commitment-phobic.”
He was. Always had been. “I can’t ignore Marise, as though she doesn’t exist. I’ve been landed with a commitment, like it or not. Just as you were left pregnant, like it or not.” He scowled at her. “What have you got against marriage?”
She scowled right back, pulling free from the circle of his arm. “I don’t have the time for it.”
“You’re too busy being a musician and a single mother.”
“Exactly.”
“If you were married, you wouldn’t be a single mother.”
“If you’re so clever, will you kindly explain to me how we’re going to handle this?” she exploded. “What about us? We just have to look at each other and our hormones spike way off the chart. Marise is trusting and innocent. I won’t carry on an affair right under her nose.”
“That’s right, you won’t. I’ll visit her when you’re not there.”
Trying desperately to conceal how his casual dismissal had hurt her, Lia said, “Don’t you get it? We’ll be tied together for years.”
“We’ll both be free to live our own lives.”
She gripped the edge of the table. “We first saw each other, masked and costumed, across a crowded ballroom. But we recognized each other right away. We’re playing with fire here, Seth.”
“Marise exists. I have to see her.”
Feeling utterly exhausted, Lia leaned back on the table. If Seth were to meet Marise, it would be at Meadowland. Which was Lia’s sanctuary, her home, the place where love bloomed, unforced and peaceful as the wildflowers of the meadows. How could she bear for Seth to invade it?
He said inflexibly, “Let’s set a date right now—have you got your datebook handy?” Because he’d been working, his Palm Pilot was in his pocket. He took it out. “How about one day next week?”
She said in a hostile voice, “I’m playing in Vienna with Ivor Rosnikov a week from today.”